


The Haunted House

by apollaskywalker



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Gen, Haunted House, POV Outsider, all characters are mentioned only
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 15:12:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18122834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollaskywalker/pseuds/apollaskywalker
Summary: Sam, a citizen of Redgrave City, explores the old house on the outskirts of town twice. All the adults in town think it's a bad idea, some are even extremely superstitious but Sam notices they're not without their reasons.(All canon characters are mentioned only.)





	The Haunted House

The house up the road and practically out of town was haunted.

It used to be pretty, adults said. Most of the time they only mentioned the fire. But if you were lucky, really lucky, you might catch the local priest crossing himself as he passed it on his daily bike trip with a muttered “Hail Mary”. Kids, the sick, mothers-to-be, and the elderly who lived near enough that they regularly passed the house found themselves visited by Hannah Gold, an old lady who pressed hamsa charms into their hands. If the gods blessed you, though, you’d hear someone say something like, “That old house...one of these days it ought to be torn down, it’s a hazard, reckless teens are going to get hurt there. But I’d sooner foot a hospital bill than be the one to tear it down.” 

Sam lived down the road from the house. They’d moved in years ago and Sam’s dad wanted to buy the property. 

It wasn’t for sale. No one knew who owned it, the paperwork was there but illegible. When they asked around for the name of the previous owner, no one knew. A few people actually looked deathly pale when asked. They would stammer out that they couldn’t remember, that it was something with an S – maybe Smith? Which was about as useful as a sharpener for an empty ink pen. There were a million Smiths. Narrowing it down, even with a first name, would still land thousands of results.

“Waste of good land,” Sam’s dad had grumbled. “Just ought to bulldoze those old ruins and put up a new house.” 

The day Sam’s dad said that, he broke his arm tripping over a rock. 

That was the day Sam believed the house wasn’t only haunted, it was cursed.

Old lady Hannah Gold gave Sam the hamsa when the family got back from the emergency room. “It will protect you!” she said, pressing the small hand shaped charm into Sam’s hand. 

“What do I need protection from?” Sam asked.

The old lady spat three times.

“Superstitious old crone,” dad scoffed, grumpy with pain. Sam’s mom gave him a glass of water and told him to take the pain meds before he voiced that to anyone other than family.

After that, Sam took pictures of the house regularly. Sam didn’t know why, exactly, but something just felt right to hold the dilapidated house in the frame, click the shutter, and preserve…something.

Once in a while there was something in the photos. Not a person, but in at least three (and Sam thought two more, but it could be just a firefly) there were eyes glowing in the windows. Sam’s mom dismissed this as dust catching the light, bugs, something on the lens. “Quit taking pictures of that old place, Sam, it’s weird.”

But Sam took more pictures – rarely showed them to anyone, but kept taking them.

The week before school started (Sam’s first year at the Redgrave school district, their motto: ‘we’ll bury you’, which, honestly, was a little messed up), Sam took a flashlight and went into the old house. Before the adventure, Sam made sure to wear good shoes and read up on how to identify solid boards to step on. It was amazing how friendly the local librarian was, and how she didn’t blink when Sam asked for books that would talk about fire damage. Maybe it was a common request, who knew?

Armed with a backpack containing a first aid kit, the camera, spare batteries, two bottles of water, a few granola bars, a swiss army knife, and a whistle, Sam made the short trek to the house. Long grasses tickled against Sam’s knees, dandelions nearing their end weren’t plucked by small hands to have their seeds scattered by wishes, bugs flew by, chirped warnings to their families, or jumped away from Sam’s feet. Closer to the house, rose bushes had reclaimed their lives from the fire and little thorns grabbed at Sam’s clothes. Probably better to wear long pants next time, Sam decided, uncertain as to how it had already been decided there would be a next time.

Once inside the house, Sam switched on the flashlight, beam barely detectible as the roof above had clearly been eliminated by the fire. Sam took out the camera and took a few pictures of the structure. Viewing them later, Sam would be able to see how the fire had spread from the entrances to the inside of the house. An electrician Sam had shown the photos to remarked that was a strange way for a fire to spread. Fires tended to start in places like the kitchen (stove, appliances that got hot or could overload circuits) or where heating elements were. External sources like grills also made sense, but it made no sense that the family would have grills at each door, much less that they would all be used at once. “This for a school project?” the electrician asked before taking the bill to Sam’s parents. Sam lied and said yes. Local history project. The electrician shuddered and suggested Sam take a look at something else. Anything else.

The damage to the house didn’t follow what Sam would have thought as the most logical. The scorched-out entrances aside, the fire ought to have burned its way through whatever was most flammable. Yet there were swaths of untouched but perfectly combustible material on the walls and even the foundation. And the stairs were a mess. Sam shone the flashlight around the stairwell. Sure, the channel of air in this closed off space would have encouraged the fire to spread in a certain way, but the charred parts of the stairs were focused at the top. Hot air rises, of course, but wouldn’t the steps at the bottom be just as charred, if not more? It would have been there for the longest.

Holding on to the railing, Sam stepped gingerly on the steps, never committing until certain it could hold. Three steps up, the railing cracked under the pressure of Sam’s grip. Probably not the best to hold onto but it wasn’t like the wall offered much in the way of support if Sam fell.

In one room upstairs, there was a closet with doors that were remarkably clean compared to the rest of the room and house. Sam’s shoes were covered in ashes and decaying material from the short walk alone, but these doors looked about as bad as dusty blinds. There were clear handprints on them too. Sam shuddered at the handprints. 

“Dante? Vergil?” a voice asked.

Sam jumped, spun around, flashlight beam wildly flickering over any and every spot a person could conceivably stand. No one. 

Sam took a few deep breaths. Ok, calm down, you’re imagining things. Maybe you said it – but why – oh shut up. Still shining the flashlight in hopes of finding the source, but also hoping not to find it (what if it was a hobo? A crazy person living here?) Sam debated the merits of calling out a “hello?”

Pros: Maybe someone was there and this was all fine. Maybe Sam could make a friend. 

Cons: That person could be a bad person. It could also be a ghost.

“No. Just some random brat.”

That voice was different from the first. 

And so Sam hightailed it out of there like whoever had set the fires at the door had set a fire under Sam’s ass. 

It was a few months before Sam went back inside the house.

This time it was with friends on Halloween. 

Instead of trick-or-treating for candy (an endeavor Sam wholeheartedly supported. Candy was good. Free candy was even better.) the three had convinced Sam to go into the house. “We’re too old to trick-or-treat,” they said.

“Doesn’t mean we should go into the house. There’s a whole movie genre devoted to why this is a bad idea,” Sam countered.

“What, are you chicken?” Tessa teased while Jimmy and Riley made clucking sounds. 

So the group biked to the house and lied to the cops patrolling to make sure kids didn’t do exactly what they were going to do that they were just going to the nearby river to get branches for Tessa’s Whomping Willow costume. Jimmy told them the car costume was at his house because it was clunky and Sam wanted to punch the two for their elaborate lie. The more details, the more obvious the lie, how did they not know this?!

They went in the back entrance, out of sight of the passerby, and eventually made their way to what they guessed to be the living room. Sam had successfully convinced them to avoid the upstairs – citing the steps as unstable and not worth their time. They agreed, once in the house, that Sam was probably right (Sam scoffed loudly at that) and they didn’t even bother to check. Sam had been worried they would find out about that lie, but they didn’t.

Riley shrieked and then laughed at herself when they all whirled about to see what had startled her. “I thought I saw someone looking at us, but it’s just that painting!” she pointed to a portrait above the fireplace.

The portrait was in pretty good shape given its nearness to a fire source, the exposure to the elements as the living room was without most of its roof, and the soot. The faces of all subjects in the painting were visible, but the man’s face was obscured the most. Of the family, the mother’s face was the one most visible, the cleanest. Sam stared at the woman, wondering who she was, if she was still alive. Which of the family hadn’t made it out? Stories were that someone died in that fire. And why had they abandoned the portrait? Had the presence of the deceased family member been too hard to bear? But no, even if one of the kids had died, a parent would want that picture. 

They continued on and Tessa found a small brooch. It was a very pretty brooch, a decorated E with plenty of diamonds and red gems and fancy emerald leaves. She decided to keep it even when Jimmy protested that they could get in trouble for it. “Who even knows what’s in this house? Who’s gonna file a complaint with the police? The portrait?” She pushed it into her pocket and let out a yelp as the pin poked her finger.

They left without ever hearing the voices Sam had heard the last time.

Maybe it had all been in Sam’s imagination.

The next day, Tessa didn’t come to school. They stopped by her house and she showed them the finger that had been pricked by the pin was a very dark reddish purple. It was hot to touch and she complained of severe pain. Once her mom got home, they were going to go to the hospital.

“You have to put the pin back first,” Sam said, thinking about how dad had broken his arm after insulting the house. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s just an infection. That pin was in all that gunk for years! Who knows what kind of bacteria lived on it.”

“What if it’s that flesh-eating disease?” Sam protested.

“Then putting a pin back isn’t going to matter.”

Sam threatened to call the cops, tell them the truth about what they had been up to, what Tessa had done. 

“Fine!” Tessa agreed. “God, you’re so superstitious!”

They biked back to the house and Tessa begrudgingly tossed the brooch into the open building. Sam wanted to press her to apologize but figured that would be pushing his friend’s limit. 

By the time they arrived back at Tessa’s house, her finger was slightly pink and the pain was almost gone.

They never went into that house again. Sam still took pictures and still carried the hamsa charm whenever the house loomed large in Sam’s mind.

After Sam’s freshman year in college, Sam returned home to take up a job in Redgrave City’s public library. At the end of the first month, the city was evacuated after the sky turned into a trypophobic’s worst nightmare and some insane plant like thing speared citizens. 

As Sam ran, three men walked by in heated conversation.

“Dante wouldn’t lose! Not with Trish and Lady and you!” the black man protested. The white haired man with him made an angry sound at the name ‘Dante’. 

“As I said, he is buying time.” The thin man with tattoos swirled on his arms offered this in what Sam took to be a stab at comfort.

The name woke the memory of the first visit to the old house. The voice had asked for a Dante. 

Two Dantes in the same town? It wasn’t a name like Ashley where Sam’s school had three in one grade. 

Whoever this Dante was, Sam decided, he could have Redgrave City if he and the city survived this. Because honestly, the haunted and cursed house had been enough. Whatever nightmare this was…fuck Redgrave City.

**Author's Note:**

> Trypophobia is the fear of clusters of holes. If you've ever seen Over the Garden Wall, you might know that the Beast's design is tied into one of the artists' wife's fear. It was all I could think of when I saw the Qliphoth.


End file.
